One tool to rule them all: a modular troubleshooting framework for SDN (and other) networks

Abstract

Due to the heterogeneous and distributed nature of computer networks, the detection of misconfigurations and software/hardware failures is frequently reported to be notoriously non-trivial. The advent of SDN complicates the situation even more, since besides troubleshooting, the problem of finding software bugs in controller/switch/VNF implementations also has to be solved. Today a wealth of general and SDN-specific troubleshooting tools are available which are usually tailored to identify network-related errors and bugs of a particular nature. In this paper we define a troubleshooting framework which can assemble many of these tools in a single platform and makes possible to flexibly combine them. As we see network operators and SDN developers execute similar tasks anyway, e.g. combine ping, traceroute and tcpdump (or more complex tools) manually to see what is going on in the network. Our framework can ease their work by consolidating the available troubleshooting tools in a flexible and automated manner.